The Great North Carolina Bank Heist

Here's how the whole thing went down. Kelly Campbell first talked about it when she was working as an armored car driver. She was standing inside the entrance to the loading dock, a few feet from where the bare ground slopes downward toward the parking lot. That's when David Ghantt approached her van. He was pushing a chrome cart—call it six feet by three feet—loaded with about $2 million in green plastic bags.

"Quick!" shouted Campbell. "Push that down the damn hill. I'll catch up with you later!"

If Ghantt pushed the cart, it would roll through the parking lot across Suttle Avenue and probably come to rest in the big empty field across the street. Load the money in your car over there and you could just drive away.

They both laughed.

"Nah, I got to go," he said. "I'm running late now."

"Well, maybe later," she said. "Some other time, then."

Ghantt had a weakness for quick-witted women in general and Campbell in particular. They'd been hired at Loomis, Fargo & Co. in Charlotte, North Carolina on the same day in December 1995. They'd worked in some of the same mills in Gaston County. They smoked and bitched together: He didn't have enough money; she was tired of her husband, who didn't seem to have a steady job.

For one glorious week and a half, they were teamed as drivers. Ghantt looked at her and saw a female version of himself—only instead of being a lanky, six-foot-tall redhead, Campbell was a full-figured woman with long hair and soft lips, sexy as hell. Unlike other women at Fargo, Campbell could handle guns and trucks. She could do the same work as a man. Easy to talk with, too.

They hung out after work. Off-roaded behind a local gun shop. Then she left Loomis and dropped out of Ghantt's life.

The roads that wind through Gaston County are dotted with churches. Jesus Christ Rises, a sign proclaims. Rejoice, the Lord has arrived! Trailer parks are hidden so well in the leafy, rutted back roads of places such as Belmont and Mount Holly that they're hard to find if you don't know where to look.

The rural working class, willing to labor for cheap manufacturing wages and a chance for a step up, built the county. They grabbed the bottom rung of the American dream and hoped for the best, churning out everything from furniture to threads to machine parts in hot, dusty mills and factories.

These days times are tough. Factories have been closing since NAFTA. Jobs are leaving. But the city of Charlotte, which borders Gaston County, is ascendant. Charlotte is a hub for skilled race-car mechanics, the unofficial capital of NASCAR and a burgeoning center for banking. And its wealth is growing.

Charlotte's money taunted Ghantt. He hauled it around in his truck for months. Picked it up and dropped it off with a gun on his hip. After Campbell left he became vault supervisor and sat around collecting receipts and handing out bags of cash to drivers. He pulled 80-hour workweeks, taking in $8.15 an hour without benefits, racking up overtime, sometimes being "voluntold" to come in on his days off.

During high school he worked in the cotton mills, running the machines. The men around him had been cautionary tales. A man named Ed had trained Ghantt. An equipment mechanic in his late 50s, with a deeply etched face, a missing finger and a stooped shuffle, Ed seemed a beaten man. He'd been at the mill for 30 years, though his wife had left him long ago. All he had was a punishing job and the bottle.

One afternoon a co-worker with a ponytail and a bunch of skull tattoos got his hair caught in a spindle. The machines spit out four inches of hair and ejaculated a torrent of blood before Ghantt could hit the off switch and pull him out.

Ghantt joined the military out of high school to escape all that. He served four and a half years. Worked on Apache attack helicopters. He thought he could be different, lead an exciting life like his father, who had survived the legendary siege of Bastogne as a paratrooper in the Battle of the Bulge and gone on to drive a truck back and forth across the country. Ghantt was in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf war and learned to depend on himself and trust his squad mates. For a while it seemed he would succeed.

The Army downsized and sent him packing. He married a local Gaston County girl named Tammy and lived briefly with her in Hilton Head. He tried to convince her they should both get jobs on a cruise line to have some adventures, but Tammy wasn't wired that way. She was homesick. Wanted to be near her parents.

Kelly Campbell lived a few towns away from Ghantt in a trailer with her husband and two kids on a rutted road a few hundred feet from her parents' trailer. When Campbell was small and she and her parents would see a Wells Fargo truck pass, they'd think about what they would do with the money if it all fell out. Buy horses. Motorcycles. Go-Karts! Or maybe just a big ranch somewhere.

Campbell had a friend from way back named Steve Chambers. They had forged their bond at adolescent keg parties in the woods. He was a beefy guy and a con man to boot. He had brown hair and a goatee. He walked as if primed for a brawl.

Chambers was a wannabe gangster. He would sit and tell you things he'd done. Said he had Mob connections. Then you'd watch a Mob movie and see stuff exactly like what he said he'd done. Did a bit of loan-sharking, too—or so he said. His wife, Michele, was sexy and skinny. Hell, she was banging. The previous Christmas she had purchased breast implants as a present to herself. Chambers really wanted to make Michele happy. They were a good match. What Michele wanted, she usually got. And Michele wanted more money to spend.

Chambers introduced Kelly Campbell to his cousin Scott Grant at a party one Saturday in the fall (continued on page 84)Bank Heist(continued from page 62) of 1996. Behind the 2,000-square-foot mobile home Chambers shared with Michele and her two kids, they lit a bonfire, drank beer and grilled.

Campbell and Chambers talked about how easy it would be to knock off a Loomis, Fargo truck. Sure, the guards carried guns, but that wouldn't stop Campbell. She wanted to be a rich bitch. Chambers talked and talked—the usual gangster bullshit.

Grant was impressed by how much pot Campbell could smoke, how much beer she could chug. She acted more like a man than a woman. A woman didn't sit around and chug beers like that. Real fun, and yet she seemed depressed.

Grant stood on Chambers's back porch as the sun set over the fields. The cousins passed joints and watched the kids play. "There's a plan in the works," Chambers said. "There's a vault supervisor I'm trying to get Kelly to talk to and convince to help us out. You interested?"

"Yeah," Grant said. He didn't think it was real. They were just talking shit.

Campbell trusted Steve Chambers completely. When they were teenagers, he had always looked after her. Never lied. Always protected her. Now she and her husband were close to divorce. They had just declared bankruptcy. They were in their late 20s, and their dreams were dying. There had been a time when they thought they could escape the trailer park and the dead-end jobs and share in the wealth and consumer culture thrust in their faces every time they turned on the television or drove through downtown Charlotte. But it just wasn't happening.

Grant was stuck in a factory. He was not happy with his life. It wasn't where he wanted to be. Was this all there was? All he wanted was a good-paying job, a good home, a car. The basics.

David Ghantt was bitter. Somehow he had ended up where he had started, working nonstop and barely earning enough to live on. Tammy was a sweet girl with a wicked sense of humor, but she didn't have much ambition. She was happy to stay put.

Sometimes it got so bad he wanted to stand up at work and tell everyone to go fuck himself. But he held his rage inside. He was married. He had responsibilities. Yet he was working so hard he hardly saw Tammy—and argued with her when he did. No vacations to any place far away. No candy bars or comic books—money was too tight. He was smoking a pack and a half a day, outside the trailer at her insistence. He had lost 15 pounds.

One Saturday afternoon he sat on the flower-print couch in his old jeans and work boots and went through bills spread out on the coffee table. He cranked up Led Zeppelin on the radio. Some CCR.

He and Tammy had a mortgage. They'd torn the yard to hell when they put in the trailer and blew a bunch of money on grass seed and a lawn mower. They'd maxed out their credit cards and could barely afford the monthly minimums. As he looked at the calculator and smelled Tammy's potpourri air freshener, he felt sick. He figured it would take 30 years to pay off his bills. He also owed payments on his Dodge Dakota pickup. And even now his wife was out shopping. He was fucked. Fucked.

Several months after she left Loomis, Kelly Campbell paged David Ghantt out of the blue.

"What the hell you want?" he teased.

"How would you feel about robbing Fargo?"

Ghantt was shocked. He knew she was frustrated. And he knew what kind of person she was—not the kind for idle chatter. He had thought about her from time to time, wondered about how things could have been different if he'd ended up with her instead of Tammy.

While Ghantt was downcast and dutiful at work, Campbell had been bawdy and defiant. She would actually stand up to a supervisor. She knew the workers were getting the short end of the stick, and she'd never been afraid to say so.

A few nights after his conversation with Kelly Campbell, Ghantt watched an Atlanta Braves game with his wife. A man named Philip Johnson had just been arrested for the biggest heist in U.S. history, making off with more than $18 million in Loomis cash before getting busted at the border. They had talked about the case at dinner. "How would you feel if I robbed Fargo?" Ghantt blurted out between innings. Tammy said it was a terrible idea. She would have to call the police. It was September 1997.

Ghantt bought a book on the FBI. He thought ahead five years. Where did he want to be? What were his options? How could he get there? As he mowed the lawn, he thought about which day would net them the most money and allow for the most time to take it—a Saturday. He studied Loomis security. The Charlotte facility was always understaffed because it paid so poorly. When someone quit, Ghantt would close the vault alone or with a new hire.

He called Campbell. They met after work one evening in the field behind the gun shop. The leaves were changing. Ghantt could taste the air, crisp and redolent of the new season. Campbell pulled up in her green Toyota pickup. She was wearing jeans and a blue wind-breaker, her hair pulled back. The two sat on the hood of Ghantt's pickup and smoked Marlboro Lights 100s.

"Are you sure you want to go through with this thing?" she asked.

"If I can get the support," he replied. He needed a fake ID and a safe way out of the country. Campbell told him she had a friend who was connected.

"Do you trust him?"

"I've known him a long time. Don't worry."

That was all he needed to hear. He didn't want to meet the guy. Didn't want to know his name. The military always taught you to compartmentalize operations. The guy had connections. He would put a crew together and launder the cash clean.

They talked about stealing a little money. Ghantt wanted to take it all. If he was going to commit a federal offense, he might as well take it all. "Think about it," he said. "I'm never going to be able to come back to this country. I'm never going to see my family again. I'm never going to see my wife again."

He told her the amount of money he wanted to take was going to be bulky, heavy, difficult to move and hard to hide. Getting it out of the country wouldn't be easy. They would have to be careful. In the first six months of any FBI investigation, the bureau goes full tilt. It'll put 30 or 40 agents on the case, especially with something as big as this. She would have to lie low for a year. Sit on it and not do anything.

Right then he turned to look into her eyes. He kissed her on the lips, and they made out for 15 minutes.

They agreed to split the money three ways.

They met again in a park near her home to work out more details. Some locals were fishing. Campbell had her little boy with her. Ghantt told her he wanted her to be the one to bring the (continued on page 140)Bank Heist(continued from page 84) money down to Mexico.

"Sounds pretty good," she said. "For once I'll be a rich bitch."

They talked about what it would be like to live in South America. "I accept your kids, and if you bring them that's part of the deal," he told her. "For this money we'll be able to give them the kind of education they want and all the advantages."

On October 4, 1997, David Ghantt watched the money roll in at Loomis, Fargo. Millions of dollars in cash was due to arrive from the Federal Reserve on the way to local banks and ATMs. Five trucks were out. His new shift partner obeyed dutifully when Ghantt set him in front of a TV in the loading bay and told him to watch training videos while he tidied up the vault.

As each truck returned to the loading dock, Ghantt separated out the bundles of checks and boxes of coins and stacked them to one side. He put the bags of cash on carts in the truck bay, pushed them into the vault and built a stash against the far wall. A few times he'd emerge from the vault and receive another page from Campbell: 1-4-3, numerical code for "I love you."

By six P.M. the last truck had pulled in. Soon after, Ghantt and the new guy were alone. Ghantt sent him to get a white oversize Loomis van, a Ford E-350. When he drove up, Ghantt congratulated him on a good day and sent him home. "We're outta here," he said.

He shut the vault door and pretended to lock it. At the employee exit Ghantt brushed the buttons of the alarm with his fingers as though he were activating it. Once in his truck he sparked up another butt and watched the trainee's black Honda disappear around the bend. Then he took a deep drag off the Marlboro, stamped it out and headed back into the abandoned vault.

The squeak of rubber wheels echoed through the dark building as Ghantt pushed waist-high Federal Reserve carts to the van. Four feet long and made of brown aluminum, the carts had clamshell lids that flipped up to reveal stacks of money shrink-wrapped in clear plastic and sorted into $50,000 bundles. To Ghantt's trained nose, the new money stank of chemically replicated wet cat hair. He scooped up the bundles by the armload and heaved them into the van.

The ATM money came in big sacks containing $10,000 to $120,000 in different denominations. It was a crisp October evening, but after Ghantt had loaded 80 bags, sweat soaked his shirt and pants and made his socks squishy.

The van drooped in the back like a lowrider, money stacked high inside it. He slammed the doors shut and headed to the manager's office. He plunked down in the big leather executive chair. His adrenaline was pumping, his body flooded with endorphins. He threw his feet up on the desk, leaned back and lit a cigarette. It felt good. He was half a step away from being rich.

Ghantt had turned the tables. He had struck back. So why not fuck the suits over one more time? The vault had a timer. He set the three clocks as far forward as they would go, locking them down for more than three days. Then, laughing, he took the giant key rings with all the keys to the locked interior doors and threw them in the van. He reckoned he'd loaded about $15 million or $16 million.

He was wrong. When he drove out of the Charlotte Loomis, Fargo facility, he was carrying $17,044,200—the second-biggest cash heist in American history. Altogether the money weighed 2,747 pounds.

The big day began for Scott Grant with an unexpected call from Steve Chambers. Did he want to make a quick couple thousand? Absolutely. Grant's girlfriend, Courtney Philyaw, followed him all the way to Chambers's house and tried to block him from entering the driveway. He told her it would be okay and sent her home. Chambers's wife was in a decidedly different mood.

"Ain't you nervous?" she teased.

"About what?" Grant asked.

"Steve hasn't told you yet?" she said. "I'll let Steve tell you."

Grant was appalled when Chambers finally did. "Hey, you want out? You can get out," Chambers told him. Then he starting painting pictures: wealth, happiness, a trust fund for Grant's daughter, a new car. The smooth son of a bitch had a way of talking. He could get you to do things you didn't want to do. He was a hard person to say no to, persisting on like that.

A few hours later Grant settled uneasily into Chambers's black Mazda 626 outside the Loomis, Fargo facility and waited. He slumped low. The place was probably loaded with cameras.

Grant's dread mounted as a skinny redhead—Ghantt—appeared on the other side of an entry gate and struggled to pull it open. Chambers turned to look at Grant.

"Go over there and help him."

"Uh-uh," Grant said, shaking his head.

"Go over and help him."

Grant pulled on a pair of gloves and got out of the car. He ran over to the gate, grabbed it and pulled. He turned his head to the side so the redhead couldn't see his face.

Finally the white van lumbered through the gate. Grant had been nervous driving with Chambers to Loomis, Fargo. Now he was scared.

"The dude is an idiot," he said once he was back in the Mazda. "He doesn't even have enough sense to get a gate open!"

Chambers gave a dead-eyed stare. The dude was cold.

"We're gonna have to take him out," Chambers announced. "He's a liability."

"No we ain't," Grant shot back. "I ain't being involved in no killings. You promised me no guns or killing."

Then they took off.

Two cars ahead, Kelly Campbell was driving north toward I-85. Ghantt, in the white Loomis van, drove behind her, while Chambers and Grant brought up the rear. Eric Payne, another old friend of Chambers's, was waiting with a Budget rental van in the parking lot of Reynolds & Reynolds, where he worked. Once in the deserted lot, they'd transfer the loot to Payne's rental and ditch the Loomis van.

Reynolds & Reynolds lay at the end of a wooded road near I-85 lined with dark, boxy printing shops, graphics houses and companies that make ball bearings. The thin redheaded guy jumped out of the Loomis Ford E-350 in the parking lot, clutching a $50,000 bundle of cash and leaving behind his Loomis service pistol and two videotapes from the surveillance cameras. He climbed into Campbell's vehicle. Then they were off.

Grant jumped into the Loomis van. He found the key to the back door and threw it open. Grant, Payne and Chambers stared in solemn silence. Mounds of cash in cellophane packets were piled from floor to ceiling, more money than any of them had ever seen.

Chambers hooked up a flashlight in the corner of the Loomis van. Grant grabbed money by the armful and tossed it out. Chambers and Payne crammed it into blue metal drums in the rental van.

Grant was throwing money faster than they could load it.

He was stepping all over money. He was swimming in it. A siren burst out down I-85, headed in their direction. They froze. An ambulance. Take the 100s, 50s and 20s. Leave the 10s, fives and ones. They had to hurry.

"That's enough. We got to get out of here," Chambers yelled.

Payne got into the Budget van. Chambers got into the car. Grant hopped back into Ghantt's Loomis van. He drove across the street, past a decaying building, through a cracked parking lot, over the grass and into the woods. He left the car running with the key in the ignition.

Finally Grant was back in Chambers's Mazda 626.

"Did you get them videotapes?" Chambers asked as they drove away. "Nobody told me to get them," Grant responded.

"Well, good," Chambers said. "They ain't going to be looking for us. They'll be looking for him."

They piled the money on the kitchen table back at Chambers's double-wide mobile home. Michele kissed her husband and talked about how they were going to buy a house. Grant looked at his cousin. "Nobody's going to buy a house," Grant burst out. "The plan is to sit on the cash for six months."

He paced the room as they counted the money. The stacks of crisp 100s, 50s and 20s were huge. "Look at it all," Grant said. "We're gonna get caught."

"No," Chambers said, "we're going to take this to our graves."

"Look at all this money—you think the government is just going to let this ride?" Grant lamented.

"If everyone does their part," his cousin declared.

Grant called his girlfriend. She had been looking for him all day. She demanded he return home—now. The cash count was up to $8.6 million.

That night Grant took $6,000 home. Courtney Philyaw ran to him. Where had he been? He scattered stacks of fresh $100 bills onto the kitchen table.

That night Courtney had the best sex of her life.

David Ghantt had been unnerved as he drove the Loomis van out of the gate. On the road at one point he had spotted a Charlotte police cruiser. After that he tried to put a cigarette in his mouth but couldn't light it because his hand was shaking so much. He spat it across the van.

Once Ghantt was with Campbell, he relaxed. She was quiet for the first 10 minutes or so. "You know what? I'm a rich bitch now. I can do what I want," Campbell said.

She was right. They were both rich.

"Now I can get my kids some toys," she said. "I can take my mom on vacation. I can finally get rid of my husband."

They got to the airport in Columbia, South Carolina. It was desolate and closed.

Steve Chambers had come through with a fake ID for Ghantt. He'd persuaded an old acquaintance named Mike McKinney to sell him his Social Security card and birth certificate.

Chambers had assured Campbell he had a plan for the money: He would stash it with friends in New York who owned a bank, and then he'd use his connections to wash it and get it out of the country when the time was right.

But Chambers hadn't figured out Ghantt's transportation. This was a major glitch. How could Chambers have fucked this up? Campbell called him. He told her to drive Ghantt to the bus station.

"You need a money belt," Campbell said. They pulled into a convenience store across from a Waffle House. Campbell bought panty hose. She cut the ends off and stuffed money into them. She wrapped the money belt around Ghantt's chest and secured it with medical tape. She stuffed stacks of bills into his cowboy boots, then put him into a cab.

Ghantt caught the last bus out of town that night to Atlanta. He moved on to New Orleans and crossed into Mexico, settling into a four-star hotel with a view on the Cancún beachfront.

The heist dominated the local news. Loomis, Fargo offered a $500,000 reward. Everything pointed to Ghantt. The vault supervisor had left behind a videotape from the surveillance camera in the assistant manager's office that he hadn't known about. It flitted among 16 different camera angles. Between shots of the employee bathroom and the back parking lot, Ghantt appeared, methodically loading money into a van.

The FBI found the van with the other two videotapes and more than $3 million in discarded 10s, fives and ones within days. Ghantt made his national television debut on America's Most Wanted. His parents and Tammy told police he must have been forced to commit the crime.

To some of the agents, this was plausible. Ghantt was known as a punctual, dedicated worker who sometimes pulled double shifts before dawn. Days before the crime he'd made a dentist appointment—hardly the behavior of someone about to skip town.

"We would sit around speculating: What are we going to do if we find David facedown in a cornfield in Abilene," says former assistant U.S. attorney David Keesler. "What if he fell in with sophisticated thieves and we find him dead with no evidence?"

Ghantt was having the time of his life. He had never had a pair of $150 Oakley sunglasses before. So he purchased three: one red, one white and one blue. The American dream, baby! He got jeans and hand-stitched python-skin boots. They'd fit one pair of feet—his.

Then he hit the clubs. If you don't get laid in Cancún, you've left your pecker at home. He bumped into a cruise ship full of horny German tourists. They were there to party. They spoke a little English; Ghantt spoke a little Spanish. Didn't matter—he had a weak spot for blondes. They were tall and leggy with heart—shaped asses, and Ghantt had a hot tub.

He spent money like a stockbroker and partied like a rock star. He cruised the pools at Cancun's best hotels. He checked out women in thongs. He strolled sandy beaches and watched the sun sink into the ocean from outdoor bars where the waiters brought fruity drinks with little umbrellas in them. He sipped champagne and tossed money around at restaurants. He scoped out a Jet Ski business and came up with a plan to open one with Campbell when she came down with his money.

Whenever he saw couples walking along the beach, holding hands, he truly missed her.

For a time he made do. He changed his name daily, doled out drinks like cups of water at a marathon, told people he was a race-car driver. Soon he was throwing raucous parties at which the air smelled of sex and suntan lotion, and beautiful women he'd never met arrived at his door in packs. He woke up two days after one rowdy bash and found a black sequined G-string on the fan and cocaine in the sugar jar.

Buff, mustached Eric Payne got his wife a pair of breast implants and a nose job. His sisters, Celeste and Karen, had always wanted bigger breasts too. So he hooked them up with $3,500 jobs. Celeste told the neighbors in the trailer park that she had quit her job and cashed out her 401(k) to pay for them. Karen suspected the money might have come from some sort of illicit deal. Still, she had always been flat as flitter, and she'd always wanted implants. Her kids thought it was funny, but she loved them.

Kelly Campbell bought her kids trail bikes for Christmas. She got them their own television and a PlayStation. She took them and her mother on vacation to Florida and got Chambers to help her buy a new minivan.

Steve Chambers and his wife outdid them all. They moved into a $635,000, 15-room mansion in a gated golf-course community. They took friends out in rented limousines to steak dinners and led a posse to Atlantic City.

Then they decorated. In the bar area of the mansion Chambers placed Dallas Cowboys team plaques from 1971, 1977, 1992 and 1995. A 1993 Cowboys Super Bowl championship plaque served as the centerpiece. The couple told acquaintances that Chambers was a retired Cowboy.

He told others that he had won money gambling. He told his old friend Calvin Hodge that he had made the money in the furniture business. "There's a lot of money in furniture," he said. It seemed plausible to Hodge, a former co-worker who drove an ice cream truck and worked for the city. Soon after the heist Chambers actually purchased a discount-furniture business in downtown Gastonia, which he shuttered for remodeling and stocked with high-end goods. He considered buying a nightclub and renaming it the Big House.

Calvin Hodge was at the Chambers palace the day a leopard-print runner arrived for the winding staircase in the entry hall. He watched movers haul in a big-screen TV. Chambers picked at them. He had a long driveway and said the movers were lucky he didn't make them unload the truck at the bottom and push the TV down the street. But he tipped them well, and they left happy.

Soon ceramic urns on seven-foot-tall pedestals lined the entry foyer, leading to a large mirror in a leopard-print fabric frame. A baby grand piano was off to the side. In his study Chambers set up an antique cash register. He placed a handmade Civil War chess set with hand-painted pieces on the table. He had a black antique Underwood typewriter, a Confederate flag blanket, a leather trash can. On the wall he placed a large painting of a dog in military clothes.

They installed a white wooden four-poster king-size bed with leather on the headboard in the master bedroom, along with a silver-plated statue of an angel and a woman, and two bronze statues of nude men. There was a bust of Caesar in the dining room, and a leopard-print ottoman, gold-framed oil paintings of zebras and 22 assorted Barbie dolls in a glass case were in the living room. Elvis Presley presided in a black frame (a velvet version was in the storage room) over the pool table in the game room, near a picture of Robert E. Lee and a six-foot-tall wooden Indian.

Before Christmas Chambers showed Hodge a $43,000 3.5-carat diamond ring he planned to give Michele. "I don't care who the woman is, no woman deserves a ring that big," Hodge told him.

Agents interviewed David Ghantt's Army buddies, his high school friends and his Loomis supervisors and colleagues. The conversations confirmed what they already knew: Ghantt was a docile guy who dreamed about exotic places and muscle cars. He liked spy novels. But he was hardly the kind of guy to pull a $17 million heist. Only one detail stuck out: Ghantt's co-workers all noticed how enthusiastic he got when he talked about Kelly Campbell. In recent months he'd hinted to some work friends that he was getting some on the side.

Steve Chambers was running out of things to buy. It was a strange dilemma: He loved money, but he knew that if he didn't get rid of it he would end up in prison. He hid some in barrels in his garage, buried some in the backyard. After getting tossed out of a local bar, he tried to buy it. Michele toured Gaston County's banks in a shiny new white BMW z3, approaching tellers with paper bags full of 100s and asking how much she could deposit without filling out any forms. "Don't worry," she said. "It's not drug money." One day she walked up to a window with a briefcase containing $200,000 in cash. After she left, the teller filled out a suspicious-activity report that eventually made its way to the FBI.

Chambers continued to insist to Campbell that he was stashing the money with his connected friends in New York. In reality he had no place to put it all, and he and Michele were scrambling to hide it.

Chambers approached family members and friends. He told some he had struck it rich gambling. Would they deposit, say, $30,000 for a $10,000 cut? Calvin Hodge was trying to get his father to write a $250,000 cashier's check on Chambers's behalf in exchange for cash. Chambers persuaded several friends to open safe-deposit boxes, then crammed them full of money.

Michele persuaded her parents to open a safe-deposit box. She slipped stacks of cash to a friend who was a bank teller in the area. For a generous fee, Grant's brother Nathan agreed to keep an eye on $2 million stashed in a nearby storage facility. Nathan and his wife purchased a tanning bed and a big-screen television.

One day a tipster informed the Charlotte FBI office that Eric Payne had gone to work for one day after the heist and then taken a three-week vacation. Payne was also driving a brand-new Harley-Davidson. The FBI was intrigued that Payne worked at Reynolds & Reynolds, near where the Loomis van had been dumped.

Steve Chambers had ponied up $100,000 in cash for the furniture business. A tipster called the FBI to report the transaction and convey suspicions about the buyer with the big new mansion. The FBI had a file on Chambers; the small-time scam artist had once served as a low-level informant. The FBI tailed Kelly Campbell one afternoon and ran a check on the new minivan she was driving. It was registered to a man named Robert Dean Wilson, who, the bureau discovered, had paid for it in cash. The alias was in Chambers's file.

The FBI installed wiretaps on Chambers's and Campbell's phones.

In Mexico David Ghantt was running out of cash. He and Campbell had set up a system of codes—he used a calling card to ring her pager, then left the time, date and number where he'd call her. They talked about once a week, which filled him with heartache.

On the phone one night he told her again how he felt and said he couldn't wait to see her. But she was spooked. The FBI had already come to see her, and she didn't want to try to go anywhere until the heat died down. If she couldn't get down to Mexico, Ghantt said, someone else would have to. He had no more money.

Chambers wanted Ghantt dead. He told Campbell he wanted to get rid of him. "No way," she said. "Absolutely not." Ghantt had trusted Campbell more than anyone else in her life. She did not want to betray him. Chambers let it go.

Campbell felt squeezed. FBI agents continually pressed her for interviews. Chambers kept tabs on her 24 hours a day. She smoked pot like crazy. Chambers had all the money, and he called all the shots. She was stuck. Didn't know what to do. One day she could no longer take any more of his badgering.

"Just do what you're going to do," she said weakly, "but I want no part of it."

Steve Chambers had chosen a hit man: an imposing former Marine named Mike McKinney—the same McKinney who had agreed to sell Chambers his birth certificate and Social Security card. Chambers instructed McKinney to get close to Ghantt and look for an opportunity to take him out. In the meantime McKinney would serve as the courier, using the fake name Bruno.

Bruno showed up late to his rendezvous with Ghantt. He threw $8,000 in cash on Ghantt's bed. Said it was all he could get through the airport. Ghantt hit the roof. This was bullshit—after all, he had just smuggled $30,000 in $20 bills.

One day in December Ghantt ate a burger at the Hard Rock Cafe. "You look awfully familiar," a stranger said. "You look like the guy who robbed Loomis, Fargo in North Carolina."

"No, can't be me. I've been here a couple years," Ghantt shot back. He paged Campbell. He needed to get out of there.

Chambers sent McKinney back down. McKinney told Ghantt he had plans to evacuate him to Mexico City and perhaps Brazil. He made Ghantt nervous. As the pair drove down the coast to the island of Cozumel, McKinney wouldn't make eye contact. He asked Ghantt if he was armed. One night the two sat on the balcony of an expensive hotel overlooking the water, downing drinks and talking. "You sure know how to pick a good view," McKinney said.

Ghantt loosened up. They started talking about Kelly Campbell and Steve Chambers. McKinney mentioned that Chambers and his wife lived in a mansion and that she had bought a new BMW convertible. He wondered where they'd gotten the money. Ghantt was shocked. Mansions? BMWs? Ghantt told McKinney about the $17 million bank robbery, of which he had been ignorant. It was a sobering conversation for both of them. When it was time to leave for Mexico City, McKinney told Ghantt he didn't have a ticket for him yet. "I'm going to go back and talk to Steve," he said.

A few days later the phone rang in Ghantt's hotel room. "I'm a friend of Bruno's," a man who identified himself as Roberto told Ghantt. "I'm supposed to come help you."

Roberto was a tough-looking Chicano who had grown up in L.A. and had fled to Mexico to avoid prison. But when Ghantt showed up at Señor Frog's in Playa del Carmen wearing a Jerome Bettis Pittsburgh Steelers jersey, Roberto smiled. "You a Steelers fan?" Roberto asked. He'd been looking for a Bettis jersey. The Steelers had just gone to the playoffs and blown a big game. The two Steelers fans downed beers, ate nachos and griped about the loss.

Roberto took Ghantt back to Cancún and found him a place to stay. Freshly stocked with cash by McKinney, Ghantt invited his new pal to go clubbing. Ghantt picked up the lavish tabs. They had fun. They clicked.

Ghantt asked Roberto to get him a cell phone. Roberto came by one afternoon to drop it off. The two stood alone, the door shut. "I got something I got to tell you," Roberto said. "That Bruno dude, somebody hired him to kill you." And then he confessed that Bruno had hired Roberto to do the dirty work.

Ghantt was devastated—and terrified. He cut down on the booze. Didn't want to get too drunk. He needed to stay sharp. He was miserable. Paranoid.

He holed up in a new hotel room, ate M&M's and watched television. He thought about his family and the reunions he'd skipped or shown up late for. He thought about how his uncles and father were gone now. He missed them. He regretted not skydiving. He'd gone white-water rafting only once and loved it. Why had he been so cheap? Why had he wasted so much of his life working?

He called Campbell and told her he didn't want to deal with Bruno anymore. She insisted he must. Finally, it clicked. She had to be part of it. "I know what you're doing. And the same thing Steve has planned for me he has planned for you," he said.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"You know what I mean," Ghantt shot back. "What you need to do is load up that .45 I left you." He hung up the phone.

Ghantt went to a flea market and bought a 15-inch bowie knife. Then he blew town.

Campbell was on her wiretapped phone telling Chambers she planned to get liposuction on her buttocks and a tummy tuck. Chambers didn't care. He pressed Campbell aggressively for Ghantt's exact location. Then he got on the phone with McKinney. Told him Ghantt was in Cozumel and it was time to strike.

The FBI decided to move.

Ghantt was hiding out in Playa del Carmen—not in Cozumel as he had told Campbell on the phone. The FBI traced one of his calls to a hotel. One afternoon Mexican police, accompanied by a stocky Italian American, approached Ghantt. After a confused moment of terror, Ghantt burst out, "Please tell me you are from the FBI!"

"I'm from the FBI," Special Agent Mark Rozzi responded.

"Boy, am I happy to see you!" Ghantt confessed.

In a series of coordinated early-morning takedowns on March 2, 1998, scores of agents stormed trailers and homes across the Gaston County area. They hit Chambers, Campbell, Payne, Grant and eventually numerous friends who had, many unwittingly, helped launder money. Well versed in how the process worked and looking at heavy time, Chambers started singing the moment he got into an interrogation room, selling out his cousin and everybody else.

Over the course of the next couple of months the FBI recovered or accounted for most of the $17 million. In 1999 a judge sentenced Kelly Campbell to five years and 10 months in prison. Michele Chambers got seven years and eight months. The two are in the same compound, but "we never talk to each other," Campbell wrote in a letter to Ghantt. "I can't even stand to be in the same room with her." Of her old buddy Steve Chambers, Campbell says, "After we were arrested and the fog had cleared from my brain, I realized that Steve was most likely planning on killing me, too." She also wrote, "Yes, to an extent I did lie to you and deceive you. But if I would've had my way about it, you would have gotten your full share of the money."

Scott Grant was released last spring and is now married to Courtney Philyaw. He hopes never to speak to his cousin again. Steve Chambers got 11 years in prison and remains in a lockup in Estill, South Carolina. His family says he is seeking a movie deal. "I am not tooting my own horn when I say my life story is pretty interesting," he explained to Playboy in a recent letter. "I've taken risks all my life. Nobody knows all the details like I do. I'm a criminal, a retired criminal now."

David Ghantt got seven and a half years. Sitting in a prison visiting room, looking back on his life, he expresses a relief at escaping the trap of consumerism that seems odd for a man living in a metal cage. "They try to put you in this little box, our society," he says. "You feel like you're trapped because you look around at all your neighbors and they all look alike. All those minivans. I don't know about you, but that depresses me all to hell."

Standing in front of the prison yard gate, in his tan inmate's uniform, the naive young dreamer who fell in love with Campbell is a distant figure. Ghantt's scrawny shoulders are broader. The limp patch of hair on his head is shaved clean. As he turns to leave, a jauntiness enters his stride.

Does he regret what he did? He calls out over his shoulder, "It's the most fun you can have with your clothes on."

A prison guard slams the metal gate shut, turns the key and shakes his head.

The amount of money he wanted to take was going to be heavy, difficult to move and hard to hide.

His adrenaline was pumping, his body flooded with endorphins. He was half a step away from being rich.